Beware of the man in the black frock coat for he walks among
shadows, a friend to the night. He inhales fog and exhales fear. He
passes beneath the yellow electric suns hanging from the black porcelain
sky, and when he pauses to raise his gold-handled cane the mists about
him gather like ghosts, and stories form for all to see.

He can peer into your heart and your mind, and he will tell your most
intimate story to others. Beware his insidious presence at the edge of
your property, outside your window, at your door—for he knows you better
than you will ever know yourself.

What Color is Your Face?

T

hey've come to see me die tomorrow.

It's a huge event for them, to gather from far locations and be here in
person. They want to be close. Yes, close, with only a glass pane
between us. I've been informed the entire family--both nuclear and
extended--has already arrived, and they are now in their rooms and
they’re waiting. They’re waiting, and they’re feeling . . . and I
know what they’re feeling is both hatred . . . and fear.

Before everyone beds down for the night I hear the steel doors slamming,
and even after my cellblock goes silent still I hear the echoing of
those doors in my final dreams. The grinding of pulleys, the clinking of
latches, the clanking of frames against metal jambs. At times it sounds
like the blade of a guillotine axing into its own base, again and again,
practicing for the head it will claim at midday. At other times it
sounds like the “Ready! Aim! Fire!” -bang-bang-bang! of firing
squad rifles and the bullets exploding across the imperceptibly small
space between muzzle and heart for sudden delivery to the other side,
shattered against the cold stone wall, with no memory left of their
passing.

I wake from the dreams and during these last quiet hours no one stirs.
The guards sit quietly with game PADS or smart phones or decks of cards.
Cell residents on the block whisper out of silent respect—but they do
not know that, to me, this human silence is the whisper of a rope snake
slithering around my neck for the suffocating constriction.

As 3 o’clock passes and the darkest hours silence by, I lay waiting for
my fate less dramatic than guillotine blades, more subtle than firing
squad bullets or electric chairs, less historic than the taught jerk of
a hangman’s hemp—but every bit as lethal. For tomorrow morning, at 0930,
my execution will be performed. I hear it’s going to be a cloudless day.

It is an educated brain I have; a mind that wanted to make
intelligent choices and build a life of modest comfort, respectability,
and happiness. But something inside me did not want me to live that
civil life.

After all the genome work, all the code selection to filter out
"undesirable" genetic traits, and a million years of natural human
evolution before that, the most basal depths of the human psyche, I
realize now, are still there. Even with the most modern treatments of
drugs, therapy, or Reconstructive Genetic Infusion—that one trait—the
capacity to murder another human being, is still buried within each of
us. Yes, even to this day in this technologically brilliant age, some
killers are just . . . born.

#

They let me have a TV monitor tonight—one of my last requests—so I can
watch an old favorite movie. They suddenly treat you with an odd and
irreverent respect on your final day, as if your life suddenly now has
meaning and everything else that came before, that you did or did not do
to put you here, no longer matters.

Perhaps it is something much more selfish that makes everyone around me
quiet and fearful . . . it could be any one of them headed toward
execution. And with death lurking, even for a convicted murderer, God is
suddenly quite close and all souls are suspect.

A cigarette—even
though I don’t smoke—seems appropriate. After all, how many times have
we seen it on the monitors like the one across from me now? A last
cigarette before I die.

“Ironic,” the guy says from the cell next to mine. It’s all he has to
say to me, so I stop talking to him about movies and cigarettes.

Like the rest of the men in this echoing chamber—in this fortress prison
no man could ever escape from—my neighbor does not speak now. Even my TV
monitor does not speak—I shut it off just before 0200—and it’s blank
now, silent, green-faced, and as glassy-looking as I imagine I must
look. I cannot know for certain how I look or what the true color of my
face is in my final hour. They would not give me a mirror. It is not for
anyone’s safety. I could easily break the glass on the monitor and cut a
guard’s throat in some vain attempt at a last minute escape—to nowhere.

Perhaps, from experience, they know a condemned man should not look
clearly into his own face, his own eyes. Perhaps they fear the face of
someone else might be there and frighten a man to death before they
can kill him themselves. Perhaps the mirror will reveal a face from a
past life; or the face my soul will lurk behind in my next life.

My next life?

Yes, I will be back. I will be back, and they know it. They will be
there in the audience to watch me die. To see my chest rise and fall
under the sheet as my body tightens before the injection hits my veins,
freezes my muscles, coagulates my blood. They will sit there for twenty
minutes after to make sure I’m really dead, that my chest has stopped
moving, that my breath is really gone. They will need to see as much as
they can to close their feelings of hatred.

On their way home by car, by plane, by train, and during the days and
weeks after, they will hope my soul will advance a little more in the
process of moving from this life to the next. They hope that I will not
be a monster to their children’s children who I will meet, of course, in
time.

It is, after all, those with young souls who are destined to live over
and over again. To crawl and step and walk and run as mortals until
learning happens and growth occurs and, like those before me, I too
become an old soul, filled with compassion, wisdom, and
temperament, and I finally get a reprieve from the fallacy of human
flesh and ascend into spiritual purity.

But I have a long way to go before I reach that place. And they know it.

They cannot guess what face I will wear tomorrow. Nor will their
children recognize what horrors my new smile will conceal. And their
grandchildren will not understand what dangerous thoughts behind my eyes
will look back into theirs.

And they will realize they cannot stop men like me. That men like me
come back and come back and come back no matter how many times they
genetically alter us, chemically treat us, or in their final desperation
. . . execute us.

They know and feel all these things. And that is why they fear my
death tonight even more than I.